


Until the bright logic is won

by norgbelulah



Category: Justified
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shop, Bisexual Character, Bisexuality, Developing Relationship, F/M, M/M, Relationship Negotiation, Reunions, Sequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-17
Updated: 2013-01-17
Packaged: 2017-11-25 19:30:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/642250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/norgbelulah/pseuds/norgbelulah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Raylan doesn’t have any illusions that when he returns to Kentucky, on account of his bullet lodged in Tommy Bucks’ chest, that Boyd Crowder will be there waiting for him.</i>
</p>
<p>Twenty years after they leave Harlan, Raylan finds Boyd in a place he least expects.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Until the bright logic is won

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The legend of their youth](https://archiveofourown.org/works/422195) by [norgbelulah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/norgbelulah/pseuds/norgbelulah). 



> This story is a hypothetical sequel to The legend of their youth. For a full experience, read that story first.
> 
> More alternative sequels may follow in the future.

“What would you say if I told you I loved you, Raylan?” Boyd asks him once, when they are both still very young.

Raylan has just come, messily and long and he’d smile at anything, listening with buzzing ears and a full, steady-beating heart. Boyd’s hands are in his hair and his head is on Boyd’s stomach.

Raylan smiles. He doesn’t say anything. 

Boyd is always saying crazy shit.

 

Raylan doesn’t have any illusions that when he returns to Kentucky, on account of his bullet lodged in Tommy Bucks’ chest, that Boyd Crowder will be there waiting for him.

He isn’t and Raylan’s glad of that.

Raylan returns to Bowman Crowder dead at the breakfast table and Ava greeting him at the door with kisses while her father-in-law tries to pick up the pieces of a shattered empire. It’s no surprise the Cubans get involved and even less of a surprise Raylan screws things up with Ava once his ex walks back into the picture.

He’s lucky the turf war escalates while he’s on his way to the battle, or he might have caught a bullet himself. Bo certainly catches plenty and poor Ava sneaks her way out of that cabin before Raylan can even find it back in those woods. He picks her up on the road out of that holler and they don’t speak for weeks after he takes her home.

It’s during those weeks, when Winona suddenly decides she wants to make things work with Gary after all, that he ends up on a property seizure in Madison County, about an hour south of Lexington.

Berea is a growing college town, maybe twice as big as Raylan remembers hearing when he was young. There’s a lot of shops now on its Main Street and in a few of the sides streets in the center of town. Raylan’s through with the seizure, everything overseen and witnessed and signed, and he’s beat, so he stops at one of the coffee shops to get a cup for the drive back north.

The place he walks into is small, but airy and bright with clean white walls and solid, maple colored furniture. Two tables with two chairs each are at the front of the place, followed by the counter against the wall, and a few more tables and a small stage at the back.

There’s a blonde woman behind the counter, cleaning something maybe. A bell dings as the door closes behind him and she looks up, takes one look at him, smiles, then disappears into the back room.

“Huh,” Raylan says.

 

It’s a long time since Boyd’s given much thought to Harlan and the things he left behind there.

Sometimes, when he’s with the right kind of person, he wakes up from a dream he’s next to Raylan. In his dreams, Boyd has a backbone and he just tells Raylan the things he only ever half-said. And, in his dreams, Raylan believes him and they leave together, instead of days apart in two different directions.

He wakes with a smile on his face and presses lips to skin and he falls in love for another hour or two. He makes them feel good, wanted, because that’s who he is.

He’s always falling one way or another. He’s only ever landed once.

 

Caroline pokes her head into the back office with a wicked smile on her face.

He looks up from the accounts and quirks his lips at her. "What?"

"There's two long legs just walked in. Got a smile a mile wide and a goddamn cowboy hat on. You wanna take him?"

Boyd grins. "I knew a boy like that once. Minus the hat though, Jesus--are you jerking me around, Caroline?" She knows his feelings on tall men with tall legs. He’s not sure if he’s ever weighed in on cowboys to her before.

"God's honest truth, honey. You want him?"

"Well, I surely have to lay my eyes on him now, don't I?"

She grins right back and leans through the door to brush some flour off his shirt sleeve. "I can't tell how he swings, but you sure look adorable today, Boyd."

"Thanks, darlin'," he says, rolling his eyes. He stands, walks out to the counter and comes face to face with the love of his life.

It is Raylan Givens, wearing those nice jeans on his long legs and a jacket and tie and a goddamn cowboy hat. There’s a badge and gun on his belt and a surprised look on his face.

“ _Boyd_ ,” he says. His voice is exactly the same, low and a little ragged.

Boyd grins. “Raylan Givens,” he finds himself breathing the man’s name like air. “What the hell are you doin’ in Kentucky?” Not that he’s unhappy about it, and he knows Raylan wouldn’t think that by his pleased-as-fuck grin.

Raylan smiles, still shocked, his eyes wide with it. “Could ask you the same question.” He looks around the place and sets his hands on the counter, a wordless query.

Boyd leans forward, puts his own hands on the smooth wood, very near Raylan’s and is surprised when he doesn’t pull back. “Well, this here is my humble establishment, Raylan. What can I get you on this fine day?”

Raylan breathes out his amusement, like he always used to when he didn’t quite want to laugh at whatever Boyd was doing or saying to hold his attention. “A coffee,” he says quietly and pulls out his wallet.

“Please,” Boyd waves his hand at it. “You insult me, Raylan. I got a house special for old friends, all right?”

Raylan’s eyes grow sharper at the word ‘friends’, but he says nothing to correct Boyd. He licks his lips, though, and asks casually, “You get your employees to bring you out for all the law enforcement that walks through your door?”

Boyd’s got a cup in his hand, but he turns away from the coffee maker to answer, “Only the most good looking ones, Raylan.”

Now Raylan does laugh. “Should have known better than to think you’d settle down.”

Boyd sets the coffee on the counter between them. He tilts his head and Raylan shrugs, answering without being asked first, “Got married, got divorced. It’s not much of a story.”

“I’ll bet what’s got you back in Kentucky is,” Boyd says, half an invitation in his voice.

He feels himself doing it again, falling back into old habits with this boy, now a man. He always held himself back, only slightly, only enough to break his fall, because he knew Raylan was the only thing that could hurt him.

He’s done with that. “You in town long?” he asks directly.

“I was about to head out, actually,” Raylan says, looking surprised again.

Boyd smiles, winning, real. “Can I persuade you to stay?”

Raylan’s eyes search his, a muted excitement buried not far below the surface. “With what?” he asks.

Boyd smirks. “Another free coffee. An exchange of tales.” He leaps. “Maybe dinner?”

Raylan pulls the coffee to him, sliding it across the counter, not quite jerkily enough to spill. Boyd left some room for cream, remembering that’s how the boy had liked it. He looks up, bold as anything. “Would that be a free dinner, too?”

Boyd laughs. He leans his elbows up on the counter, looking up at Raylan’s face. It was his favorite view of him, and very little has changed about it. “Could be. You should be careful, though, Raylan. I might expect you to put out.”

Raylan smiles, strangely soft. “You wouldn’t.”

Boyd’s left speechless for a moment and Raylan looks like he's about to laugh at him when he finally says, holding up a finger at the man, “Let me just...go get my employee and my coat and--yeah.”

Raylan shrugs, cool as you please, and leaning his hip up against Boyd’s counter. “Sure thing, Boyd.”

Boyd nearly runs into Caroline, with her ear at the door, as he comes through into the office.

“Who is that?” she demands in a harsh whisper. “How do you know him? What is the matter with you?” She’s looking him up and down. 

He doesn’t know what he looks like. He feels otherworldly, like the last five minutes hadn't happened at all, like he’s dreamed them. He feels inches away from wretched.

He doesn’t speak for a second and he’s looking at nothing until she pulls at his chin to make him meet her eyes. She’s got her other hand grasped at his elbow.

Caroline’s eyes are cornflower blue and he loves them in the sunshine more than he does in the dark. He tries to smile at her, but he still can’t answer her questions.

“Oh, honey,” she says. “I didn’t know you had any ghosts.”

“Just the one,” he answers.

 

Boyd’s lost a little hair, but he wears it well. That, and the tight, button-down denim shirt he’s got buttoned up to the chin. He looks like he belongs behind that counter, and he should, seeing as he owns it. Unless he’s pulling Raylan’s dick about the whole thing, which wouldn’t be surprising. 

Raylan does believe him. Though he wonders how the man ended up in Berea, Kentucky in a coffee shop with such a fanciful name.

They’re standing outside the place, Boyd in a wool coat, buttoned up similarly tight to his shirt, when Raylan asks, “You come up with that yourself?” The sign on the awning reads, “The Ugly Mug,” and pictured is a little cartoon mug sculpted into the visage of an old man with something like a bitter beer face.

Boyd smiles, looking up at it. “Not my choice. This place was left to me some years back. I could never change it.”

Raylan isn’t sure if Boyd would like him to ask about his friend who had passed. There was no way it had been family to leave him a place like this. He raises his brows slightly, but Boyd just shakes his head and sticks his hands in his pockets, saying, “Let’s leave it for the tale-telling, Raylan.”

“All right,” he says and they begin to walk.

“What brings you into my town, then?” Boyd asks him, eyes steady on him as they go. His eyes might be the one thing that’s exactly the same as they ever were. They’re a muddy green and deep-set, wise--or at least Raylan’s always thought so.

Raylan pulls his jacket past his badge. “I’m a Deputy U.S. Marshal. Came ‘round here to see about a property seizure on behalf of the United States Treasury.”

Boyd’s expression breaks into an amused grin. “You’re a federal,” he says. “Bet your daddy _loves_ that.”

“My daddy don’t get no say, son.” Raylan almost grimaces at the accent. Boyd’s just bringing it out of him like no one else has since he got back.

“I assume you seen him since you made your way back to these parts?” Boyd’s eyes are full of mirth.

“Why do you care?” The question comes out a bit more defensive than he’d intended.

Boyd raises his hands in surrender, as if Raylan’s words were a gun aimed at his chest. He blinks away the image. “Seems like that’s another thing we should save for the tale-tellin’,” he says.

“When you wanna get on that?” Raylan asks.

Boyd stops them just a moment later, reaching for the door of another establishment, just about a block from where they’d come. It’s a tavern of sorts, or a pub, and Boyd smiles at the bartender as he comes in like he knows the man well. Raylan himself gets a look from the man like he doesn’t know what he might be doing there, all curious eyes and confused frown.

“Everything good, Boyd?” the bartender asks.

Boyd smiles. “Everything’s fine, Carl. This here’s an old friend of mine.”

If anything, the bartender’s eyes get even more curious and his face breaks out into an all out grin. Boyd orders them two beers, though truly Raylan would have preferred bourbon, and they sit down in a tucked away corner of the place. It’s entirely empty aside from them and it feels a little strange, especially since Boyd’s curious friend Carl is still lurking behind the bar even after he delivers their drinks.

“This place’ll fill up soon,” Boyd tells him, probably noticing Raylan’s wary looks around the room. “The professors drink early, the tourists come for dinner, and the seniors drink late.”

Raylan smiles, wondering if Boyd thinks they’ll be here that long, but doesn’t ask. Boyd seems a little more hesitant than Raylan remembers him being, and he’s not sure if it’s because Boyd is different or if Raylan seems to be to him. Raylan doesn’t really feel very different now that he’s around the boy again. In fact, everything feels strangely the same.

He holds back on a desire to reach out and grasp Boyd’s hand as it lays casually across the table. He sees Boyd notice him looking at his hands. He could never get enough of them in the old days. He looks away quickly, then right into Boyd’s eyes, which are holding onto a raw, not quite stricken, look of some emotion Raylan can’t identify.

“Do you want to start, or should I?” Raylan asks.

Boyd smiles. “Used to be it was like pulling teeth to get a story out of you. ‘Less you were waiting to tell a joke,” Boyd says, nostalgia in his tone, and maybe a question.

“I’m finding myself too curious about you to try not telling you what you want to know, Boyd.” Raylan hears the sincerity in his voice and it sounds foreign to him. “We could do a quid pro quo thing, if you want. Hannibal Lecter-style.”

Boyd laughs. “You fancy yourself Clarice Starling?”

Raylan just rolls his eyes and asks the question he’s been waiting twenty years to ask, “Where’d you go, Boyd?”

Raylan had only gone back to the mine that day, the one after the collapse, to say goodbye to Boyd. He’d told him, told him for days, that he was leaving and the near loss of his life was the last straw. All his shit was in his car and all Helen’s money was stuffed in his wallet and his shoe.

But Boyd hadn’t been there. He wasn’t at Audrey’s and he wasn’t at his daddy’s and he wasn’t in the cabin they’d meet at sometimes, though there Raylan did find a small note, folded and stuck between two of the slats on the front door. 

It wasn’t addressed to Raylan, but it couldn’t have been for anyone else. It read, “You never asked me to come with you. I just couldn't be here with you gone. Everyone always told me to go to a city.”

Raylan hadn’t understood it at all, still didn’t. And now he stares at Boyd, the question just fallen from his lips and he wonders if he looks as lost as he felt that day.

Boyd’s expression turns almost disturbed for a split second, then he smiles again, recovering some of his old mercurial charm. Raylan remembers him doing that in the dark, looking at Raylan like he’d just done something terrible, then quickly smiling, as though he’d decided it was something amazing instead. Raylan had loved that, but hadn’t really known why. He doesn’t smile now, because he’s waiting for Boyd’s answer.

“I went to New York,” Boyd tells him softly. 

“Really?” Raylan asks, brows shooting up. For some reason he hadn’t expected him to go so far, or, he supposed, ever return if he had.

Boyd nods. “I stayed a few years. I lived with some people, went from place to place, thing to thing. But, I got homesick, I suppose. First, I thought it was for the South so I went to Atlanta for a few years. Then I realized it was just for Kentucky and I came here. It’s really nothing at all like Harlan, but it’s close enough I can drive to the hills and walk them if I want.”

Raylan is about to open his mouth to ask another question, but Boyd raises his finger at him and says, “Quid pro quo was your idea. How did you end up back here?”

Raylan sees no reason to lie or paint a nice picture for Boyd, if he still was anything like the Crowder boy he used to be. “I gave a man twenty-four hours to leave Miami then shot him in the chest over lunch when he didn’t. They transferred me to Lexington as punishment.”

Boyd’s eyes were wide. “You didn’t.”

Raylan’s lips quirk. “I did.”

“That was you?”

“Oh, so you heard about it?”

“Caroline, the employee of mine that you saw, she was talking about it--what was it--six months back?” Boyd shrugs a bit and smiles again. “I don’t read the news. I just talk to people about what they read. So I didn’t see no pictures.”

Raylan grins. That sounds very much like the Boyd he knew.

“So your jurisdiction’s just the counties around the city?” Boyd asks, frowning like he’s sure that’s not the case.

“No,” Raylan says, picking up his beer and taking a fast draught. “I get down to Harlan quite a bit these days.” He refuses to tell people what Art and the rest of the office calls him. Then he adds, “But that was three more questions from you. I get the same now.”

Boyd grins slyly. “You asked another back though. Just two.”

“Fine,” Raylan says and considers it. He thinks about coming back to Harlan all the damn time. Then he thinks about Boyd’s daddy. “Boyd, how much do you get word from home these days?” Raylan doesn’t really think of it that way anymore, but he uses the term because he’s almost sure Boyd does. He always loved the county and the hills.

Boyd’s eyes sharpen. “Not often. You remember Maisy Granger? I talk to her sometimes on the phone, to catch up. She’ll tell me the news a bit, but it’s never anything too specific. And we haven’t spoken in over a year. I think she had some man trouble, maybe moved away.” He pauses then asks in a low tone, “Why?”

Raylan wishes he wasn’t the one who has to tell him as he begins to speak, “Your father and brother are both dead, Boyd. Ava shot Bowman, about six months ago, the day before I came back, in fact. She got a self defense sentence and probation, as he was beating the shit out of her for years. Bo was released from prison--you heard he was inside?”

Boyd’s eyes are wide again, but not shocked, or even very grief-stricken. “Yeah, two years back, Maisy said he went in.”

“He was released a few months early on account of Hunter Mosley working with the Cubans in Miami to put him away in the first place. He was on the warpath with them when he got out. Got himself shot at the cabin.”

“The one in Brogie Holler?” Their cabin, when they could get there.

“Yeah.”

“Shit,” Boyd says. "You were there?"

Raylan shakes his head. “Not for the shoot out. I got there soon enough to watch him bleed out. Would you believe, I was late ‘cause I almost forgot where the place was?”

Boyd smiles, a little sadly. “I was always the one driving, with you drunk half the time.”

“Less than that,” Raylan defends himself and Boyd’s smile grows. They never got to go there as much as they wanted, or as much as Raylan wanted anyway. He could never tell what exactly Boyd wanted, except for him. Boyd always wanted him so badly.

Raylan pushes his hand forward across the table, but Boyd’s isn’t there anymore. It’s on his glass, finishing it in three long gulps. Boyd’s lips tighten when he’s done and he motions over to Carl for another round. “You want to get some food?” he asks Raylan.

“I could eat,” he says, then asks quietly, “You never went back?”

Boyd makes a face. “I thought I had time to.”

“No one ever said anything to me about you after I came back.”

“Well, I’m glad I didn’t cause you no trouble, Raylan.” Boyd’s tone was defensive now, hurt in some way. 

Raylan wasn’t sure what to say. “That ain’t what I meant.”

“Did you mean I should feel better they died not knowing who I am? What my life is now?”

Raylan looks away. “I don’t know, Boyd.”

They get their next round quickly and Boyd takes a drink before he says, almost sheepishly, “I lost count of the questions.”

Raylan smiles, despite himself. “It don’t matter. What else do you want to know?”

“I can’t think of anything, I--” Boyd shakes his head. “You ask me somethin’. I’ll tell you anything, Raylan.”

Raylan wants to say he knows he will, but he remembers the look on Boyd’s face when he said he knew Boyd wouldn’t expect him to put out. He looked almost touched, like he couldn’t believe Raylan would have such faith in him, or that he would still know him so well.

Raylan can’t imagine Boyd being any different than he was at nineteen. 

It was as though he’d sprung fully formed into the world, fully expecting everything he wanted to come to him, for the world to love him like he loved it and be true and good in spite of everything set against him. It was an intoxicating feeling, so much so that Raylan had made so many choices, done so many things he never would have dreamed of doing just because Boyd smiled at him in a certain way, or said he was beautiful and meant it.

“How did you come by the coffee shop?” he asks simply.

“I rented the room above it,” Boyd says. He smiles, nostalgic. “It was about ten years ago. I wanted to get out of Atlanta. I was missing Kentucky, but I wasn’t ready to try going home. I found Berea because of some friends in Atlanta coming up for a craft festival they host in the summertime. I thought,” his smile grows wry and even more nostalgic, “I’d meet some interesting people, at least.”

“And did you?”

“Well, certainly, Raylan,” Boyd says with a chuckle. “College town, tourist spot, there’s always people comin’ and goin’ from here. Arlene--she was the one owned the coffee shop--she let me stay above it, gave me a job there, left it to me eventually, though I never asked for such a thing.”

Raylan smiles at him. He wouldn’t have. “You like the running of such a business?”

“Oh, I always was working odd jobs, in coffee houses and restaurants and such. The kinds of things you can do with just a high school diploma. I stayed with people, never really had a permanent address for a long time, but you can’t always depend upon the kindness of strangers and friends and lovers.” He says the last with a wink. “So I’m used to it and I like it well enough. You always get to talk to people. And you know how much I like that.”

“I do,” Raylan says warmly.

“I assume you like bein’ a lawman, looking the way that you do,” Boyd says, but not as though he’s laughing at Raylan for being such a cliche, more like he loves it and doesn’t want to reveal that just yet. 

Raylan’s a bit bewildered at how easy Boyd has become to read. He can’t tell if it’s because the man is more transparent or if he’s just that much more perceptive than he was at nineteen.

Raylan shrugs in answer. “It’s more interesting than a lot of things.” 

He’s not sure he wants to dig too deep into his current feelings on his profession. They’re all murky and tied up now in Nicaragua and Tommy Bucks, coming back to Kentucky and his family and his roots. So far the only good thing it’s brought into his life is screwing two beautiful women and letting him see Boyd again. Still, every single one of those things has only brought more complications with them as well. Raylan doesn’t usually like complications.

“Well, I suppose it’s encouraging that it’s still like pulling teeth to get you to say anything at all about how you’re feeling,” Boyd says with a smile. “You haven’t changed all _that_ much.”

“I try to keep consistent,” Raylan replies and tries on a wink of his own. Boyd grins at him, pleased as pie.

They sort of just look at each other for a minute, until the sound of Raylan’s ringtone echoes out from his pocket. He grimaces at Boyd and says, “Excuse me,” turning slightly away to take the call. He knows it’s Art, he was due back in the office at some point that afternoon and obviously he hasn’t made it. “Hey Art,” he says. “Sorry, I got held up.”

“By what exactly? I was informed by Schrader’s lawyer that everything went smoothly.” Art sounds as dry and irritated with him as usual.

Raylan glances at Boyd and can’t help smiling. “I ran into an old friend in town. I’ll take PTO for the afternoon if you really want.”

“Well, Raylan, it would have been nice to hear about that before you decided just to up and take the time. I did have some things for you to do today, but I guess I’ll have to wait next to your friend of times gone by. Also, I thought you didn’t have any friends besides yours truly.”

“I know it was just the paperwork from the Schrader thing and I know that it can wait an extra day, Art. You’da told me that something else came through immediately if it was more than that. So, can I have the time?”

“You gonna want to take tomorrow as well?”

Raylan knows this is Art’s sneaky way of trying to figure out if he’s sleeping with somebody, just so he can glower more when he catches Raylan talking to Winona in the hallway outside the office or the courtrooms. He doesn’t really understand why the man’s so interested in his personal life, but he doesn’t really care for Art guessing anything right then, so he just says, “No, but I might be in a bit late. Long drive and all.”

“Yeah, real long, Raylan,” Art scoffs and clicks off the line without saying goodbye.

“Your boss?” Boyd asks.

“Yeah,” Raylan says, slipping his phone back in his pocket. 

“Sounds like he’s got a vested interest in you.”

“He’s nosy. And we go back a ways. I used to teach firearms with him at Glynco before I was in Miami.”

Boyd smiles, eyes almost dancing with amusement. “You, Raylan Givens, forged young minds?”

Raylan waves him off, rolling his eyes. “It wasn’t no classroom, Boyd, it was a firing range. Most of ‘em weren’t all that young, and they only had me on because they like to get someone in there who’s actually shot a man.”

Boyd’s expression darkens just a bit and he sits back for a moment. “How many men have you shot, Raylan?” His voice sounds almost concerned.

“Several,” Raylan says in too clipped a tone. He doesn’t believe Boyd is judging him for it, not coming from where they do, but he doesn’t understand why he asked the question. “Every man I shot forced my hand. They were all justified in the eyes of the law.”

“I wouldn’t doubt it,” Boyd says carefully.

Raylan frowns at him. “I didn’t think so.”

The place is starting to fill up with older couples and large groups in booths with beers all around. Raylan sees Carl the bartender head over with a notepad, but Boyd sort of shakes his head at him and turns back to Raylan.

“I find I’ve changed my mind about the meal, Raylan,” he says. His eyes are plaintive his mouth slightly open like he wants to say or ask something else.

“Let’s get out of here then,” Raylan replies.

As they leave and are walking through the rapidly filling tables Boyd is stopped more than once by people who know him, who smile at him warmly, familiarly, then take a close look at his face and say something like, “What’s the matter, honey?”

One is a woman, maybe forty-five, with glossy black hair and very dark eyes and a smile that looks years younger. She touches Boyd on the arm and everyone at her table seems to have at least some idea who he is. She tells him, “It’s been a while.” When Boyd glances at Raylan, her eyes light up. “You never have visitors, Boyd,” she says. “We could have had a party.”

Boyd tries to smile, “You mean an interrogation, Lydia.”

The woman shrugs, then frowns as she realizes something is off. She gives Raylan a dark look, like he’d better not have done anything to the man and pulls Boyd down close to speak into his ear. Bayd shakes his head, twice, sincerely, and says, “You worry too much.”

“You look like he raked you over some coals.” She speaks like she can hardly believe it.

Raylan still hasn’t been introduced, and he’s getting the feeling Boyd has no intention to do so. “It ain’t his fault,” Boyd says just loud enough Raylan can hear. Lydia’s eyes widen slightly, as though Boyd’s accent usually isn’t so thick. Boyd kisses her on the cheek, says goodnight to the table, and makes a beeline for the door.

 

Raylan is frowning at Boyd as they walk back up the main street. He’s looking down with his hands in his pockets when Raylan says, “You’re pretty popular around here.”

Boyd lets a smile ghost across his face as he looks up. “I’m always popular, Raylan.”

“Tell me,” Raylan says, tilting his head, “what’s the deal with you and Lydia?”

Boyd shrugs, but meets Raylan’s eyes. He won’t make any excuses. “She works at the college, in administration. I met her almost right after I came here. She and her husband have an open marriage now because of me.”

Raylan laughs, a short bark of surprise. “You sound proud of yourself,” he says.

“Ain’t nothing I did or didn’t do,” Boyd says, trying not to wince at the slip of his accent. “They figured it out by their own selves.” 

He tries not to let his accent go so much. It wasn’t a big deal in New York or Atlanta, in fact it got him in places and out of bad situations a few times based on charm alone, but here, there were people who could pinpoint it, who would know just who he was and where he came from by listening to him talk naturally for a few minutes.

Raylan is just bringing it out in him, letting him fall back into rhythms and speech patterns and old lines of decades ago. It feels rejuvenating in a way, exciting, but he also feels a strange trepidation to go along with his surprise at the ease with which Raylan seems to be able to read him these days.

He never used to do that so well. Raylan only ever used to know what Boyd told him, with not only his words, but his eyes, his hands, his smile.

He smiles now at Raylan, a grin of recovery, of new effort to be like himself, like the man he’s become. Raylan smiles back, but as though he knows something and isn’t saying. Boyd pretends not to care.

“You see a lot of people from the college?” Raylan asks curiously.

He answers lightly as they walk back towards the shop. “Well, I find your average one night stand with tourists, or a tryst of some kind when the crafters come through in the summer, but most of the people who come back to me work for the school.” Boyd slides his hands into his pockets again, pushing down the desire to loop one through the crook of Raylan’s arm. “Visiting professors are fun, but you have to pick the right one, one who’ll understand you won’t be moving on with them.” 

Boyd had had a few bad experiences with people who thought they could change him, who thought he would come. “You can be a goddamn barista anywhere,” Jorge had told him years before Arlene left him the shop. “What’s here that’s not in St. Louis?”

Boyd had told him the hills and walked out the door. He doesn’t tell Raylan this. He never reveals the details. They only spoil things in the end.

Raylan nods sagely and says, “I’ll remember that.” Boyd wants to touch him again, but he thinks about the ex-wife he mentioned. Boyd doesn’t assume Raylan still pines for the woman, but he knows, has always known, he wasn’t anything but a blip on the boy’s sexual map. 

He figures Raylan’s got a woman, but he can’t force himself to ask. He doesn’t think he wants to know and he feels a twist of self-loathing in his stomach. He’s rarely so cowardly as this. He hates it so much he almost wants Raylan gone. Almost.

“What’s wrong?” Raylan asks him softly and touches his shoulder with an open palm. 

Boyd thinks he might collapse under its weight. He takes a long breath, unbidden and heavy as Raylan’s touch. Then he puts that smile back on his face, dismayed that it slipped, just like the accent.

They reach the door to the shop. Caroline closed maybe a half hour before and the downstairs is dark. Boyd turns to the alley next to the building and says, pointing down it. “That’s my door.”

“You still live upstairs?” Raylan asks.

“She only left me the shop. She had a house, went to her brother and his family and they sold it to the school for a substantial sum. It’s a sorority house now, which she would have loved,” Boyd answers. “The apartment is large, though. More than I could have hoped for when I came here. Arlene was very generous to me.”

Raylan tilts his head again. “Would it be weird if I asked you why?”

Boyd smiles and leans against the glass door of his shop. “Not at all. Did you mean why she would love the sorority or why she was so generous to me?”

“I guess both, now that you mention it,” Raylan says, shrugging.

“Arlene was a lesbian, originally from the area, though I believe she travelled extensively across the country in her youth. She told me once she left behind a great love to come back to Berea and care for her mother. The building was in her family, her father had been a tailor for many years, and she started the coffee shop in the early eighties. She’d let whoever was her favorite employee live above the place if they wanted or needed to. She called it taking in strays. It was some kind of luck she’d just lost a girl to marriage when I came through her door looking for work. She said later she took one look at me and fell in love.” Raylan gives him his own look and Boyd grins. “Platonic love, son. She said anyone who’d chat up a girl about the cut of her dress while keeping an eye on the bus boy’s ass was going to be fun to know and easy to love.”

Raylan laughs at him and leans in closer. Boyd wonders why he put himself against a wall, a glass one at that. “I always wondered what kind of shit you’d talk to people about if you never had to keep a lid on it.”

Boyd glances away, unsettled by the dark curiosity in Raylan’s eyes. “I always said what I was thinkin’, Raylan. Was my eye I kept mostly to myself.”

Raylan huffs his laugh now, soft and almost silent. “Mostly.”

Boyd forces himself to meet Raylan’s eyes, dark in the shadows cast by the streetlight, but clear and looking at him fondly. Just echoes of memories, he tells himself as Raylan says, “I suppose this is where I leave you then.”

Boyd had always tried to do his leaving first.

“I suppose,” he answers weakly.

Raylan’s smile turns sad. “Well, at least I know where to find you now,” he murmurs, raising a hand to touch Boyd’s cheek, and leans in quickly, pressing his lips, soft, too chaste, to Boyd’s own.

Boyd can’t stop himself. He pulls him in further, opening his lips and offering his tongue up to him, warm and right and just like it used to be. And Raylan follows. He presses closer, sliding his raised hand around to the back of Boyd’s neck, pulling his other hand up to his face and jaw, like he’s holding something precious. He moves his lips and tongue with Boyd’s and he tastes wonderful.

Boyd moans and Raylan pulls back, keeping his hands where they’d traveled. His expression is mildly perplexed. “That was supposed to be a goodbye kiss,” he says.

Boyd can barely think, they’re pressed so close still. He runs his hands up Raylan’s arms. “Did you want it to be?”

“No,” Raylan answers and kisses him again.

“Come upstairs,” Boyd says to his lips and pulls him down the alley.

As he’s opening the door, Raylan is at his back, still close, and Boyd can feel how hard he is through his jeans. He presses his forehead against the door, eyes on the lock, vision hazy with want as he tries to get it open. Raylan’s lips are on his neck, fingers pulling down on his tight collar. His mouth moves to the skin beneath Boyd’s jaw. 

“Why didn’t you just ask me up?” he breathes across Boyd’s ear and slides a hand across his stomach, fingers catching on buttons, moving down to his belt.

“Fuck,” Boyd says, finally getting the lock. They stumble in together and up the stairs. Boyd’s already working on the buttons of his shirt and Raylan’s long legs are going twice as fast as his up the steps.

They climb up into the living room and Boyd doesn’t care about a bed, he pulls Raylan onto the couch and slips his jacket off in no time, his tie too. Their mouths are on each other, moving faster than before, breathless and wanton. 

Raylan groans into his mouth now, when Boyd finally gets a hand on his cock. “I want you,” Raylan says slowly, “to fuck me, Boyd.”

Boyd pulls back immediately. He looks Raylan hard in the eyes. “You always said you never--”

Raylan kisses him again, swift and sure. He says to his lips, “I didn’t know what the fuck I wanted. Do it, son.”

Boyd does. He can’t imagine saying no to Raylan, not now.

They pull each other’s clothes off and Boyd smiles wide at the look of him, fit and lean, harder than when he was young, but not by much. Raylan’s on top of him on the couch and he smiles right back down at him and runs his finger across the large tattoo on his shoulder.

“What is it?” he asks.

Boyd looks up at him. “Goldenrod,” he says. “For Kentucky.” He thinks they both remember how it grew around that cabin in Brogie Holler and that’s all Boyd ever thinks about when he looks at it. Raylan’s face was the only thing he pictured when they pushed the needle in his skin over and over again. “I got it after a year in New York. When I missed--” he stumbles, “this place.”

Boyd turns away and pulls a bottle of lube and a condom out of the side table where he started keeping some years ago, when it became obvious how many times he was not actually making it to his bedroom with a companion, or two.

When he turns back, Raylan is looking at him strangely, fingers gentle on his arms, sending a shiver down his back. Boyd kisses him again so he doesn’t have to see. He pulls himself up and pushes Raylan down onto his back, getting his legs up and around his shoulders. He’s already hard enough just by being near him and he can tell Raylan is just as ready as he is.

“You remember the first time you fucked me, baby?” Boyd asks softly as he slides a lube-covered finger inside him. He watches the wave of pressure break over Raylan’s face, as he feels it all up and down his body. It’s beautiful and it crests and breaks as Boyd works him open, sliding another finger in, then another. Raylan moans and Boyd stiffens at the sound. “Do you?”

“Yes,” Raylan grinds out finally and opens his eyes. 

He looks at Boyd like he’s surprised to see him, as though, like Boyd, he’s somehow become convinced this whole evening was some kind of dream. He hitches his breath, pushes his hips up against Boyd’s hand, sliding Boyd’s fingers further in of his own accord and reaches for Boyd’s cheek. “Come on now,” he whispers and Boyd almost loses it right there.

Boyd removes his fingers swiftly and presses himself in slow, careful, but Raylan shifts again and he goes in faster than he’d intended, sucking in a gulp of air, a harsh gasp of pleasure. Raylan grunts and Boyd thinks, hazily, he must have done this before. 

The thought leaves him as soon as it comes because Raylan is egging him on, pulling him up, and calling his name. Boyd starts to move and Raylan matches him, eyes closed, lips parted. Boyd leans down as he ruts up into him and kisses him, open-mouthed and wet. Boyd keeps himself steady, wanting to draw it out, make it good, but Raylan keeps saying his name like that, like he needs more, but can only ask using that one syllable, because he’s forgotten other words ever existed. He loses hold of his control.

Boyd gets his hand on Raylan’s cock, light, tantalizing and Raylan moans again and grasps at his arm, inarticulate and needful he wraps his own fingers around Boyd’s and they bring him off together, even as Boyd is coming hard into his ass. He whines and stutters and gasps out his orgasm, sounding less than dignified and hardly caring at all.

They are sticky and panting, and when Boyd pulls out, his limbs feel too wobbly and weak to do anything but crawl on top of Raylan and sigh. Raylan pulls him close, smile wide and blissed out, the same face he always used to make when Boyd took him there beautifully. 

Raylan kisses his lips, his cheek, his hair, as they settle and Boyd is again grateful some people mistake his overstuffed couch as a bed of some kind. There’s always enough room.

Boyd leans his head on Raylan’s shoulder as his boy dozes. Raylan breathes deep and long into Boyd’s ear, making him smile happily. Boyd draws his fingers up and down, in little circles and spirals across Raylan’s skin. Raylan shifts and shivers under Boyd’s attentions, but only to draw his lips again into Boyd’s hair, or along his forehead or to playfully whisper, “Cut it out.” 

Boyd doesn’t listen.

He wants to ask Raylan a million questions. He wants specifics. He wants to know. But again he feels this creeping fear all through him that he won’t like, can’t take, what he might hear. 

So he smiles and shifts, twisting in Raylan’s arms and sliding down the couch to straddle him. He’s got his hand on Raylan’s cock, bending down, when Raylan groans and laughs, looking down at him and saying, “You really ready to go again?”

Boyd grins. “I could,” he says.

Raylan rubs a hand through his hair, smile still wide, eyes full of something warm and true. “Whatchu brew in that coffee, son?” His smile turns wry, ironic. “Must really perk you up.”

Boyd’s jaw drops a little and his hand goes slack around Raylan’s cock. “Oh my God,” he says in wonder. “Did you just say that?”

“Your hearing didn’t go bad in your old age, did it?” He doesn’t wait for an answer, just smiles again and asks, “Come on, you get it, right? Because--”

Boyd almost bowls him over, climbing back up to shut his mouth with a kiss, long and lovely. Raylan seems surprised by it at first, then opens beautifully, touching his face in just that way he’d done outside, making Boyd feel as though he’s something breakable, something dear.

Raylan breaks away a moment later and pulls Boyd’s legs over the side of the couch, his feet planted on the hardwood floor. He slips off the couch and goes down on his knees, eyeing Boyd through dark lashes as he spreads his legs wide. He runs his tongue along Boyd’s half-erect cock, closing his eyes as he goes. 

He flicks a glance at it, then looks back up to Boyd. “You were the one, said you could go. An’ I guess you ain’t lyin’. I’ll need a breather, so,” he says, then swallows him down quickly. Boyd groans, arching his back and looking at the ceiling. He looks back down when Raylan slips off again and grimaces. “You’ll have to forgive my technique. It’s been a little while since I’ve done this.”

“How long?” Boyd’s not even sure why he’s asking.

“Maybe a year or so, not too long,” he says and smiles, like it’s nothing. “If you’re worried about it.”

Boyd stares at him. “I ain’t.” And can’t say anything else because Raylan’s mouth is right back on him, working like it knows its business. 

Boyd gets his hands in Raylan’s hair and Raylan’s got his fingers around the base of him, just tight enough and so, so good. He doesn’t come as fast this time around, and Raylan has to work for it, long but lovely, dogged and admirable. And when Boyd does come, he does it with a cry of Raylan’s name, and Raylan takes it all, chokes the last part down, then looks up again and smiles like he just fucking won something.

“Not bad, right?” he asks, come dripping from his chin. Boyd pulls him up and licks it off. He feels the pull of exhaustion from a fast follow up, his eyelids are heavy, his smile wide and sleepy. Raylan’s fingers pull through his hair and he almost falls asleep on the spot.

“Mmmm,” he says, as though it’s actually a word and Raylan laughs. Then he blinks his eyes open. Raylan is back on the couch, looking at him with that same fondness as before, not like any way he used to look at Boyd. It’s strange and wonderful and strangely, wonderfully terrifying. 

He leans in close to Raylan and says, “Let me--”

But Raylan shakes his head. “We’ll save it,” he murmurs. “You got an actual bed in this place?”

“Have I got a bed?” Boyd almost chokes. “Have _I_ got a _bed_ , he asks?” Boyd mutters, smiling, feeling the tired side of drunk and well-fucked. He hears Raylan give a sigh as he rises to his feet and tries to pull him towards the bedroom.

It’s Raylan who gets them there, having realised the general direction in which to go. He pulls back the covers and they slip between them together. 

Boyd’s not thinking. He’s snuggled up close to Raylan, whose arm is around his shoulders, whose mouth is pressed to his temple and fingers are tangled in his own. He’s got old patterns, beaten rhythms, stuck in his head and he asks, “What would you say, if I told you I’d loved you?”

Raylan stills for a moment, but breathes out a breath held long when he replies, “I’d say you should’ve just said so, if you really meant it.”

Boyd looks up at him. His eyes are sad, far too lonely. “Would you have listened?” he asks.

Raylan sighs. He kisses Boyd’s forehead. “I’d have heard it, at least, baby.”

Boyd only pulls him closer. 

 

Raylan wakes to the sound of Boyd in the shower.

He stretches idly across the soft gray sheets of Boyd’s, unsurprisingly large bed. It was a four-poster situation, in dark wood and with a light colored canopy in a simple, opaque fabric. 

Raylan wonders if he saves the bed for the women he takes home and leaves the couch for the men, the couch that was roughly the size of a small bed anyway. He chuckles softly, remembering Boyd had pulled lube and a rubber out of the damn table next to them. That was probably it, then.

Raylan’s clothes are somewhere in the living room, but his watch is still on his wrist. He looks at it and grimaces, realizing he’s absolutely going to be late for work. He would be surprised if he didn’t already have a message or two from Art on his phone, which is still in the pocket of his missing pants.

It’s been a while since he’s spent a night like this. With Boyd specifically added to the mix, it’s been a very long while and it makes him sort of sad to think just how long, just how much time they could have had, if one of them had pushed just a little harder all those years ago.

“If I told you I loved you,” Raylan murmurs to himself with a hand to his head and dark humor in his tone. He can’t decide which of them was a bigger asshole about the whole thing. 

He rolls out of bed before he can think too hard about it, instead focusing on Art’s probable ire at his being unconscionably late for work this morning. He goes into the living room, finding his pants and putting them on almost immediately. He’s busy bending around the far side of the couch, searching for his shirt, tie already in hand, when he hears the door open, and not the door to the bedroom, the one that leads to the stairs, and the shop, and the outside.

He stands up swiftly, hand finally closing around his rumpled shirt, and comes eye to eye with Boyd’s employee, the pretty blonde woman with the hips and the large blue eyes, which are wide now with surprise and something like excitement.

Raylan says the first thing that comes to mind while she’s busy staring at his bare chest. “You better not be his secret wife.”

Predictably, she bursts out laughing. She shakes her head she continues to giggling, fighting hard to get herself under control. When she finally does, she says, “Whoo, no way, honey. I’ve had enough of that bullshit to last me a lifetime.” She smiles at him and extends her hand, forcing him to walk forward, still shirtless, to take it. Her grip is firm and her eyes are assessing. 

Raylan meets those eyes without flinching. “He in the habit of giving all his employees access to his rooms?”

Her smile turns sly, much like Boyd’s can do, and she responds, “Just because we aren’t married, doesn’t mean we aren’t fucking.”

“So you’re his secret girlfriend?”

“Nothing so official or so clandestine,” she says letting go of his hand. “My name’s Caroline, by the way.”

“Raylan,” he returns, trying not to look sheepish. She’s eyeing him up and down now and he moves to pull on his shirt, draping the tie around his neck and starting on the buttons.

“I really thought, if you were up here, you’d either be sleeping or fucking. Sorry to barge in like this. I just need to get last year’s accounts ledger.” She moves across the room to a dark wood desk near the window. She pulls a binder from a drawer and slips it into the crook of her arm, like she’s on her way to class or something. 

He looks at his watch again and knows he really has to go. He ties his tie fast as he can without fumbling too much, and picks his sidearm, snug in its holster with belt attached, up off the coffee table where he’d dumped it. He meets her eyes as he pulls it around his waist, cinching it tight.

“Shit,” she breathes and his lips quirk. “No wonder he said you were the love of his life.”

Raylan’s hands fall to his side at her words and she makes a face like she just realized that might be too much information. Raylan licks his lips and opens his mouth, but he has no idea what he might say to this woman, who apparently works for Boyd, fucks him on a regular basis, and knows him well enough to hear a thing like that, something not even good enough for Raylan’s own ears, then or now. 

He doesn’t know what kind of face he’s making when he says, “Look, I gotta go. Tell him I ain’t running out the door, all right?”

“What are you doing, then?”

Raylan sighs and settles his hat over his head. “I just gotta go to fucking work. I’ll be...” he shakes his head and turns towards the door. “I’ll be back soon.”

 

Boyd finds the bed empty when he gets out of the shower. He finds Caroline sitting on his couch in the living room and no sign of Raylan anywhere. He hears himself sigh, short and upset, and he thins his lips as he says, coming around to face her, “It’s time to open.”

She’s considering him very carefully, much too carefully. “I think it can wait a few minutes.”

He crosses his arms in front of his chest. “What?”

“I had a few words with your cowboy,” she says slowly, like she’s gearing up for something. He sees last year’s accounts next to her on the cushion. She must have come upstairs for that and must have talked to Raylan before he sprinted out of the place.

Boyd runs a hand through his hair and flops down on the chair across the coffee table from her. “Oh yeah?” he asks.

Caroline’s face has grown from appraising to downright suspicious and Boyd feels himself squirming under her scrutiny. He’s worried she’s pissed at him, or is going to be. He’s ready to just tell her to go home. Dylan will be along before the lunchtime rush. He can handle the morning on his own, if she lets him open the damn shop in any good amount of time.

But he knows he can’t do that. She needs the hours. She’s got Aidan to think about. Boyd twists his frown at her, wondering how upset she’d be if he just paid her for the hours anyway just so long as they could stop talking about this.

“Did you ever actually tell him how you felt about him, Boyd?”

Boyd’s brows come down hard in confusion, worry. “What did you tell him, Caro?”

“More than you, apparently. I knew it,” she scoffs, rolling her eyes and sitting back in her seat and crossing her arms in a parody of his own position. “This boy really must have done a number on you, honey. Jesus.”

Boyd shakes his head. “He didn’t do anything,” he insists, thinking of what Lydia said to him at the restaurant. “It ain’t his fault. I just--”

“ _Why_ didn’t you tell him?”

Boyd stands swiftly, grabbing for his keys to open the shop and shaking his head, before he turns to the door, “I don’t want to talk about this, Caro. Fucking drop it.”

He hears her call as he’s flying down the stairs, “He’s coming back, Boyd. He said to tell you.”

“Fuck,” Boyd curses, but puts a smile on his face as he unlocks the door to the shop and lets the first, early bird, customers in.

When Dylan, a sweet boy who’s much too young for Boyd to screw without things getting messy, comes in several hours later, he gives Caroline a glaring scowl and disappears into the back office. He makes a phone call, yells that he’s going out and will be back for close, then slips out through the back door before Caroline can question him.

Lydia’s at the hotel before he is.

She’s playing with one of those plastic cigarettes, tapping it against her teeth, as he pulls up next to her car. “What’s with the short notice?” she asks him. “Daniel’s going to be pissed I didn’t tell him about this.”

Boyd gets out of the car, makes himself smile at her and says, “Call him now if you want.”

“No, he’ll just get even more mad I sprung it on him. He says there’s a head space he’s got to get into, or something. I’ll just tell him later. It’ll be like after the Christmas party. He got over that okay. He just likes to know before, is all.”

Boyd shrugs. He can’t really imagine being so particular. “We don’t have to if it’s going to cause you any strife, honey.”

Lydia looks at him hard, and he’s getting tired of being examined like he’s some kind of pod-version of himself. He can’t be acting that out of the ordinary. She shakes her head. “You look like you really need it,” she says.

“You can tell Danny that, if it’ll make it go better for you.”

“Is it the truth?”

Boyd doesn’t answer.

They go up together, pulling taking her hair down from its bun in the elevator. He takes her hand as they walk down the gaudily carpeted halls to their King-size room. 

They go faster than usual. 

Lydia likes to take things slow these days, which is miles from the quick fuck in the ladies’ bathroom at the tavern in which they had first engaged some nine years before. But Boyd isn’t in the mood to go slow, to think hard about what he’s doing. Thinking at all is going to put him in mind of thinking about Raylan and that’s the whole reason he asked her, begged her really, to come here with him.

She lets out a surprised moan when he thrusts his face into her pussy. Barely wet, he licks it that way, tongue moving in long strokes, hands lightly pushing up on the back of her thighs. She hasn’t even got her skirt off yet and he’s rucked it up around her stomach. 

Her hands are in his hair and she’s saying his name, once, twice, and then she’s saying something else. It takes him a moment to understand the words, because they’re soft, crooning. She’s saying, “It’s all right.”

He grazes his teeth across her, lightly, and takes his mouth away, making her whimper. He leverages himself, putting a hand above her shoulder on the bed, and sliding his fingers rough inside her. He fucks her with them, and looks into her eyes, smiling like she’s mistaken, like she don’t know a thing about what’s going on right here, and says, “Say that again, honey.”

She frowns at him, squirming, pressing a palm to her clit, hips bucking against his hand. Her other hand comes up to his face and he forces himself not to jerk away. “Whatever it is, Boyd, it’s gonna be all right,” she says.

He shows her his teeth, he bends down, sucks in one of her nipples, grazes the soft tissue one more time. He knows she just loves that when they get a little rough and she comes around his fingers, quaking and crying a little, and panting like she’s run a race. Her hand is still on his face and she won’t let him lean away. He smiles, wide, soft, though, just how she likes it. “It’s always all right,” he tells her. “Now, you gonna ride me, or am I gonna jack off in the shower?”

Her mouth twists at him, like she’s fighting a smile. “You’re pretty bossy today,” she says lightly, pulling him down for a kiss.

She rides him, just like he asked, going fast and bearing down hard on him at the end. She comes just before he does and thrusts a few more times to push him all the way through. She pulls off and lays down heavily next to him, leaving the covers down and their bodies exposed. 

Boyd’s feeling spent, but good for it, and he smiles at her, bending his head to go in for another kiss. Lydia pulls back from him though and meets his eyes. “Tell me about the man in the hat, or I will refuse to speak to you for _months_ , darling.”

Boyd presses his face to her shoulder and groans. 

She pushes him off, saying, “Come on, Boyd, what is it about him that’s got you so worked up, you got to come to me for an afternoon quickie? We never do shit like this. Not since after Daniel found out.”

Lydia was Boyd’s lesson in re-learning how to date in small towns, the key is staying away from married women. He was lucky she and Danny were kind enough to work it out, or at least one of them would have had to leave town.

He shakes his head, pressing a hand to his brow. “He’s an old friend,” he says and knows he doesn’t sound convincing.

“A you kind of friend or a regular person friend?” she’s smiling when she asks, her legs twining around his. It’s a beautiful thing that she still loves him. He realizes he’s being a selfish bastard.

“You know when you’re young and you’re just learning what you want?” he asks her, turning over onto his stomach and toying with the pillow underneath him.

“How young are we talking?”

“Late teens,” he says. “Just out of school. Anyway, I’d always wanted things, people, before...him. I wanted and wanted and I was so careful and I was never afraid. But,” Boyd looks over at her and she’s watching his face very intently. He can’t meet her eyes, so he looks straight ahead at the headboard. “I never _needed_...anything before I needed Raylan. That was the one thing that scared me, but not really until it was over. Not until I knew what I’d lost.”

“You never felt that,” she hesitates, dark eyes wide, “need with anyone else?”

He wonders if she’s fishing for compliments, or trying to find out just what he’s been doing with her this whole time. He sees no sense in lying to her, he’s always been the kind who takes what he wants. “No,” he says softly. “Not like Raylan.”

Her lips tighten. “And the man in the hat, that’s Raylan?”

Boyd smiles. “That’s right,” he says. “He’s a US Deputy Marshal now, a goddamn lawman.”

He turns just in time to see her wince at the different twang in his voice, the low Harlan sound. She’d heard it too the other night. Lydia’s Kentucky raised. He thinks she can tell.

“You’re such a liar, Boyd Crowder,” she tells him softly after a moment. She turns in the bed, sitting up and looking down at him hard. 

“I know,” he says. He won’t apologize though. All the lies he told, all the things he never said, he had reasons. Good ones.

“You remember the night I finally got Daniel to have you over, after we put everything back together?” she asks him and doesn’t wait for an answer. “And you got drunk enough you were talking to him about the demolitions stuff he uses for digging out the foundations. Later, he asked me, ‘how do you think he knows all that shit? Boyd’s just a glorified barista, he used to work as a bartender, how could he know?’ And I said I hadn’t the faintest and we dropped it at that. And he likes you, I still can’t believe you got him to actually like you.” 

Lydia shakes her head and climbs off the bed, picking up her underwear and skirt. She scowls at him as she starts to dress. “Where you from, Hazard? Cumberland?”

Boyd turns to face her, unflinching. “Harlan,” he says.

“Perfect. You both from there?”

“Yes. We grew up together.”

She shakes her head again, stepping jerkily into her stockings. “No wonder you’re so fucked up about him.” She laughs, not bitterly, but like she’s pissed at herself. “And here I thought you were one of these Lexington suburban boys, too bourgeois pretentious to admit such humble beginnings. You really put one over on me, Boyd.”

He tightens his lips. “Lydia, I never said ‘cause--”

“Your goddamn hillbilly family was gonna come after you for bein’ queer? I fucking get it, Boyd. I just wish you’d given us all a little more credit.”

He looks away from her now. “Are we done, then?” he asks softly.

“Fuck, no,” she says, grabbing for her bag. “We are far from _done_ , darlin’. I just don’t want to see your fucking face for at least a week, understand?”

He looks up at her, surprised to see tears brimming up around the corners of her eyes. “Lydia,” he says, at an utter loss.

She points an angry finger at him. “Just know, too, that you’re getting off goddamn easy. And tell that cowboy that you needed him like air or whatever the fuck it was, because if I thought I knew you, then who the hell knows what _he_ thinks.”

She slams the door behind her.

Boyd lays in the bed, thinking for far too long, showers, then gets dressed and goes back to the shop.

When he gets back, Dylan is on his way out and Caroline is at the door with the keys. She lets Boyd in before locking and calls as he walks to the counter. “I got your Wild Turkey from upstairs. We’re gonna get drunk and clean the espresso machine.”

Boyd smiles at the half-empty bottle and two glasses she’s already set out for them. The last time they’d done something like this, Arlene had just told them she’d been diagnosed with breast cancer. 

“Where’s Aidan?” he calls back.

“At his Gram’s for the night.” 

He pours them three fingers each. If she wants to get drunk, and if she doesn’t have to be home for her kid, then they are going to get very drunk.

When she comes back from the front, Caroline looks at the glasses then up at him, tapping her foot like a schoolmarm. “I gather Lydia didn’t help as much as you’d hoped.”

Boyd shrugs, takes a pull from the glass. “She’s just as mad at me as you, now.”

Caro huffs and throws her hands in the air. “I’m not mad, Boyd. Jesus.”

“You sound a little mad.”

“Well, I’m not,” she insists and they drop it. 

They remove the beans, wipe down the outside, and run the cleaning solution through the machine, sitting on the floor in silence and sipping at their drinks as it hums and bubbles through the cycle.

After a few minutes, she turns to him and says, “You remember after Rick left me and that assistant soccer coach kept coming in here to flirt?”

Boyd gives her a look worthy of the question asked. He remembers all the flirty guys, they’re quite a bit harder to come by than the girls.

She continues regardless, “And I didn’t want to go out because my ass was still hurting from Rick dropping me?”

Boyd doesn’t answer. She’s going to throw his own words back at him, he knows it. She loves this shit.

“You remember what you told me?”

Boyd doesn’t really. He can’t quite recall precisely how he was feeling on that particular day, so he shrugs and replies, “I assume some variation of a carpe diem, you’re a beautiful woman with glorious tits, fuck Richard-leave-you-with-a-baby-Ford-style pep talk.”

Caroline rolls her eyes and the last dregs of booze in her glass. “Well, you wouldn’t have known about my tits since we hadn’t slept together yet at the time,” she says smirking.

Boyd throws a glance at her chest. “Honey, you know I could tell. Even then.”

“Shut up, asshole,” she says, knocking her shoulder into his. “You said, ‘You can’t be afraid, Caroline.’” She’s putting on a deeper voice now and her terrible yankee rendition of his delightful Southern. “‘No one who was scared of taking a leap ever had an orgasm worth a good goddamn.”

Boyd stares at her. It sounds like something he’d say, all bravado and half-metaphors that mean virtually nothing. He almost laughs at her for listening to him, but they were young then--she was anyway--and it obviously made some kind of impression on her. So he finishes his drink too and tells her, “This is different.”

She turns away from him and runs the machine again, for its last cycle. It’s a loud noise, but a familiar one, and Boyd closes his eyes to it, setting the curve of his empty glass between his teeth. When he opens them, she’s looking down at him, maybe a little sadly. 

“I guess you should know,” she says like she doesn’t believe him.

He sets down the glass and smiles up at her, flippantly, turning it on bright. “I get plenty of good orgasms, honey.”

She smiles right back at him, but it’s more of a baring of teeth, and it leaves him with the impression that she’s a little disgusted. “Yeah, sweetheart, but are you getting the _best_ one of your life?”

She kneels down in front of him, takes his face in her hands, which smell of vinegar and coffee beans. “A prospect like that, with no guaranteed return, might leave even the bravest of us shaking in their boots.”

He frowns at her. “Well, what the hell am I gonna do, Caroline?”

“Leap anyway, you ridiculous boy,” she says and presses her lips to his forehead.

 

An hour later Boyd is another two drinks in and sitting alone at the bar in the tavern.

Caroline had to go pick up her boy, so he wasn’t mad she’d left him to his own devices, but he was feeling like he needed to talk to someone or his thoughts were going to spill messily out of his brain pan and ruin the dinner of everyone in the restaurant.

So, he turns to Carl, who has been carefully watching him out of the corner of his eye this whole time, and says casually, “You know, I found out my father and brother are both dead yesterday, but I’ve barely thought about them at all since this morning.”

“Too busy thinkin’ about yer man in that hat,” Carl says, hands busy washing a glass, rinsing it, and setting it to dry. At Boyd’s surprised look, he adds, “The way you was lookin’ at him, son, I thought you were gonna fuck up my bathroom again like you done with all them girls over the years.”

Boyd smirks. “It was at least one boy, too, Carl.”

“Don’t tell me that shit, I don’t wanna hear it.” 

Boyd smiles and finishes his drink, knowing Carl isn’t so hard as all that. If he’d wanted to, he could have thrown Boyd out of this place for fucking in the bathroom, or causing that fight the one time, or looking the wrong way at a boy, several boys really, but he never did. 

Carl could have poisoned this town against Boyd, but he didn’t and Boyd loved him quite a lot for it. He would have gone to bed with him--maybe a few years ago now--just out of gratitude, if that man had asked. Which, of course, he never would. He was straight as an arrow and married with grandchildren.

“Get me another?” Boyd asks, sliding the glass down the bar.

“You sure, son?”

Boyd feels his smile twist into something sad, self-pitying. “Very,” he says.

“Well, I sure am sorry to hear about your kin,” Carl says, returning with the bourbon.

Boyd shrugs. “I really can’t even say if _I_ am, Carl, but thank you.”

“I imagine it’s a complicated situation,” Carl goes on quietly. “With you an’ your kin, comin’ from where you do.”

Boyd looks up at him and asks softly, “And where is that?”

Carl gives him a look like he must think the man’s an idiot. “I’m from Jenkins, Boyd, everyone in fifty miles knows the Crowders, have done for longer than you been on this earth. I met your grandaddy ‘fore I got out of that town. You got the look.” Carl pauses to take a sip of the beer he keeps for himself behind the bar, then adds, “An’ I heard you talkin’ to yer man in the hat last night. Ain’t no way you’ll convince me you ain’t been in the hole together at some point.”

Boyd shakes his head. “Shoulda known better than to think I’d fooled you.”

“Damn straight, boy,” Carl says. “Now, I know you left here with that cowboy last night. What’s with the rain cloud over your head about it?”

Boyd doesn’t bother wondering why Carl seems so interested. This is the longest conversation they may have ever had with one another, so he decides to let it play out. He’s also feeling honest along with buzzed, and sees no sense in lying to the people in this town anymore, since they keep calling him on it. “I guess it’s because I know I can’t keep him,” Boyd tells him, propping his elbow up on the bar and leaning his head on his open palm.

“You ain’t usually the type to do that, though, are ya?” Carl’s back to washing glasses.

Boyd takes a pull from his glass, a long one. “Well, then maybe it’s because I want to so much. An’ even if he wanted to stay, I wouldn’t know how to keep hold of him. I’m not any good at that.”

“Son,” Carl says in a wildly patient tone. “If he wants to stay, he’ll fucking stay. If you gotta make him, it’s no good for either of you.”

“No, you don’t understand,” Boyd says, shaking his head, looking at the bar top instead of Carl. “I don’t think--Raylan--he’s--”

“Comin’ through the door,” Carl says.

“What?” Boyd almost spins off his chair.

“He’s right here,” Carl repeats just as Boyd sees him, tall in his jeans, hat in hand, complete with badge and gun, coming through the crowd waiting to be seated just inside the door. He’s looking right at Boyd and he’s smiling that soft, funny smile that’s doing a weird thing in Boyd’s stomach.

“Hey,” he says when he reaches Boyd at the bar.

Boyd’s eyes are wide and he’s clutching at the edge of the bar, but he manages to croak a, “hey,” back.

Raylan eyes him for a second, looking at the half-finished drink, then right into Boyd’s eyes. “Your friend, she told you I said I’d be back, didn’t she?”

Boyd nods. She had. Boyd just supposes, now that he’s confronted with the reality of Raylan standing in front of him again, that he hadn’t actually believed her.

Raylan looks over at Carl and says, “I’ll have one of what he’s got. But he doesn’t get any more, okay?”

Carl’s lips quirks a bit and he moves to get the drink. When he places it in front of Raylan, who hasn’t sat down yet, he says, “What he does or doesn’t get, son, you’ll have to take up with him.”

Boyd looks between them, and he feels oddly like he’s being fought over, which hasn’t happened to him since Atlanta--and, shit, that hadn’t been fun at all. This seems more amusing, but in an embarrassing way that’s also not very fun. 

“I don’t want another one, anyway,” he tells them. Raylan smiles, so that’s all right.

Raylan still doesn’t sit, but he leans on the bar, turning towards Boyd as he sips his drink. “You got friends here closing around you like a wolf pack, Boyd. I keep getting nipped.”

Boyd makes a face. “They’re all pissed at me,” he confesses.

“Why?” Raylan’s tilting his head. Boyd wonders if he does that when he interrogates, criminals, fugitives, prisoners, or whatever. He wonders if his eyes are always so piercing. 

“Well,” Boyd hedges. “Not all of them. Just the ones that know about you.”

“Is that so?”

“Just ‘cause I won’t tell them anything. And then they get pissed ‘cause they find out anyway.” Boyd takes another pull from his drink, now watery from the melted ice. He frowns at it, realizing he hasn’t eaten almost anything today.

“Boyd, how could they find out if you didn’t tell them?”

Boyd’s frown deepens as he answers, trying to think it through. “Well, I guess I tell one of ‘em one thing and another another and they all get the same pissed anyway. Even if fuckin’ Caroline says she ain’t. I can tell.”

Raylan pulls Boyd’s drink away from him, siding it away, down the bar. He glances over at Carl, whose moved away some from them. “He don’t look pissed.”

Boyd puts his hand to his forehead, feeling an ache start behind his eyes. “Maybe, but he don’t understand.”

“Understand what?”

“You an’ me,” he says, looking up at Raylan, whose eyes have gone dark.

“Yeah,” he says softly, coming closer, reaching a hand up to Boyd’s shoulder and drawing it up to his neck, the soft hair’s at the nape. “But do you? ‘Cause I’m not sure I do, either, Boyd.”

Boyd doesn’t answer. He wonders now if he does, really. He thinks about fucking Raylan, about how he said he hadn’t known what he wanted and he somehow does now, about that head. That head had been amazing. 

He looks at Raylan and the question comes out of his mouth before he can consider it carefully enough, “You screwed other guys?”

Raylan gives him this look, jaw dropped and big eyed, and he moves his hand back down to Boyd’s shoulder, pulling him off the bar stool. “We ain’t gonna talk about that here, all right?” he says quietly, in a tone that’s not far from pissed off. He beckons to Carl, “What’s his tab?”

Carl shakes his head. “He’ll pay it when he’s able. I know he’s good for it.”

Raylan’s lips thin. He picks up his glass and downs the rest of his drink like a shooter. “Let me get mine then.”

“Nope,” Carl says. “He’ll be on me about it when he’s able. His friends almost never pay.”

Boyd grins, leaning into Raylan. “We’re at least friends, ain’t we, Raylan?” he asks. At least that.

Raylan almost pulls away. Boyd can tell he’s not used to a public display. He must not be out. Maybe he fucks other guys, but he can’t be out. He had a wife, it must be a side thing, a secret.

But Raylan doesn’t pull away. He looks at Boyd, frowns like he’s trying to figure something out, and just grips his shoulder tighter. “You are drunk, Boyd. I’m taking you home.”

Boyd sort of nods, because that seems pretty true, and he follows Raylan when he moves towards the door. He remembers a few seconds too late to turn and say, “Later, Carl,” to the man who just waves him off, smiling like something is funny as hell.

They walk through the crowd, still waiting to be seated and Boyd sees Mark, a boy who used to work for the coffee shop back when Arlene was still alive, he’d been a theater major at the college and flaming as hell. Now he works for the college, on set and costumes and shit. Boyd is with him when he’s between boyfriends because he’s also monogamous as hell.

He must be between boyfriends right now because when he sees Boyd’s face, his own breaks into a beautiful fucking smile, full of the promise of a night of glorious sex and a morning of chocolate chip pancakes.

“Honey,” Mark asks, reaching out to Boyd, laying a warm hand on his arm, without a second glance at Raylan. “Where are you going? The night’s just getting started.”

Boyd just keeps walking, bumping into Raylan when he turns back to face Mark, not quite scowling, but not friendly either. Boyd smiles, flirty, like Mark loves, and says, “Can’t, darling, Raylan says I am drunk, so we have to go home.” That sounds mostly like what he said.

Mark looks at Raylan now, with a critical eye, that Boyd knows isn’t going to come up with much to complain about. “Well then,” he says. He leans in a plants a kiss on Boyd’s cheek. “Have fun. And nice to meet you, Raylan.”

Raylan sort of squints at Mark, like he’s sizing him up, looks over at Boyd like he’s some kind of lost cause, then tips his fucking hat and pulls Boyd out the door.

 

Boyd starts laughing on their way out the door and takes almost the whole walk to his place to get himself under control. Raylan says nothing, keeps his hold on the man’s shoulder and steadies him when he stumbles.

“Jesus, Boyd, did you eat anything today?” Raylan asks, while Boyd’s stifling a laugh behind his hand.

Boyd shakes his head. Unsteady, he grasps at Raylan’s jacket, righting himself and saying, “No, I been thinking about you.”

Raylan frowns. Boyd’s white teeth are flashing in the dark of the evening and he looks a little crazy with that hair and the lost, drunk, look he’s got in his eyes. This is the last version of Boyd Crowder that Raylan was expecting to see when he came back to Berea tonight and he isn’t really sure what to do with him, especially if he’s going to continue saying shit like that.

Raylan doesn’t know what to do with that at all.

 

“Give me your keys,” he tells Boyd, with as much patience as he can muster. He leans Boyd up against the brick wall of his building and waits for him to fish his keys out of whichever pocket they’re in. Raylan figures he might as well keep asking questions, if Boyd is going to give him ridiculously honest answers. “You wanna tell me what’s so funny?”

Boyd closes his mouth, suppressing another laugh with a tight, huge grin. His fingers are pressed into the bricks behind his back, like he wants to sink them in, like you would into sand or dirt. Raylan thinks for a second he might just have the willpower, then he wonders if that was just the old Boyd, the one he knew. He wonders how different this man is now. 

Boyd looks up at Raylan and his grin turns crooked, mocking. “You an’ me,” he says, a weird challenge in his voice. “There might be a law against two such glaring cliches screwin’ in this state. You wanna check that for me, ‘fore we go any further?”

Raylan’s brows furrow. “Boyd, we already fucked. Or did you forget that after you downed five drinks on an empty stomach? And since when do you care about what the law says?”

“It was four,” he replies, holding up three fingers, checking, then quickly adding another. Then he smiles. “An’ I thought you might care. Just bein’ neighborly.”

Raylan inserts Boyd’s house key into the lock, glancing over at him as he asks. “You don’t like the cowboy routine?”

Boyd sort of giggles and gets his head into his hands. Raylan can’t remember a time he’d seen him this far gone when they were young. Boyd was always so careful. “No, Deputy,” he says, breathless with more laughter. “I really really love it. How do you feel about my bisexual escapades?”

Raylan shrugs. “Well, I guess that depends on how you feel about mine.”

Boyd gives him a weird look at that, something like disturbed, but Raylan can’t be sure, then slips past him, through the now open door and up the stairs.

Raylan calls after him, “Boyd, you got any food up there?”

He walks all the way up the stairs to find Boyd already sprawled out in his couch, hand halfway into his pants. He asks, “You hungry, Raylan?”

“No, asshole,” Raylan grinds out. “I ate on the road. You on the other hand, need something in your stomach before you pass out. Preferably both food and water.”

Boyd smirks. “Can I jus’ get somethin’ in my mouth? I owe you back one from--”

Raylan turns away before he finishes. The whole apartment, besides the bedroom and the bath, is an open affair with no walls. He can see the fridge clearly across the room, so he goes to it, opens it up, and finds absolutely nothing. 

“Boyd,” he says, leaning out of the hollow appliance, “why is it that the only thing you got in this refrigerator is half a jar of mayo, three sticks of butter, and two cans in a case of bud light?”

Boyd seems to have rolled over on his stomach, so he’s talking mostly to the pillow when he answers, “Because I do not cook much in my abode, Raylan, and my college-age employee left that shit in there after a party I held some months back. If you want food, there’s sandwiches in the cooler downstairs.”

Raylan rolls his eyes. “ _I_ don’t want food, son, you do. Can I get in there without using your other keys?”

“Yes, there’s a door at the bottom of the stairs.”

“Am I gonna set off an alarm?”

Raylan hears Boyd’s huff of impatience. “This is small town America, Raylan. And I do not have the kind of money in my bank account for such an investment, or in my safe for anyone to pillage.” Raylan thinks is Boyd is still lucid enough to use and pronounce the word ‘pillage’ properly in a sentence, they might get out of this all right.

“Is there anything in particular you’d like to eat?”

“Besides your cock?”

Raylan almost laughs at that one. “Yes, Boyd, besides that. A thing from your cooler, remember?”

Boyd takes at least ten seconds to think about it. Ten seconds that feel so long, Raylan’s already heading for the stairs when he finally answers, “Ham and Swiss, please.”

On his way down the stairs and as he’s searching for Boyd’s sandwich cooler, Raylan recalls Boyd pointing out that Raylan had often been drunk on their way to the cabin. Which was true, no matter how much Raylan might have liked to defend himself. 

Boyd would only drink more than one when they were alone. Boyd was always the one taking care of him, making sure he was being careful about what he said, how he acted, driving them to the cabin and home again, talking to Arlo once they got there to take the attention off him. 

Raylan hadn’t known what to do with him then, either. Hadn’t known how to tell Boyd how grateful he was, how lucky.

He finds the cooler and is searching for the ham and swiss as he remembers a night in Brogie Holler, one of their last. 

They’d been drinking ‘shine and talking about Bowman taking up with little Ava from down the hill and how pretty she’d gotten. Raylan had asked him, carelessly, “Would you go with her, even after she been with your brother?”

Boyd had shrugged, curling a fingertip around the mouth of his jar. “Maybe in a few years. She’s too young now.” Raylan had nodded, but then Boyd looked up, right into Raylan’s eyes and said softly, “But not if I was with you.”

Raylan doesn’t know now what he’d been thinking, too wrapped up in his own shit, he guesses. He’d been getting the money together with Helen. He’d applied to school and everything. He can’t think of a single thing in his life he regrets more now than when he said to Boyd, “But you won’t be. I’ll be gone by next week.”

And Boyd, the stupid boy--like Raylan should talk-- hadn’t pushed. Raylan knows now he must have wanted to. He just smiled that beautiful smile, all teeth and desire, pulling Raylan close, and they didn’t say another word until they’d both come twice. They’d woken up at dawn and went to work in day-old clothes. One week later, Raylan had been on the road to school, wondering why Boyd hadn’t bothered to say goodbye for real.

“What the hell are you doing down there, Raylan?” he hears Boyd call from somewhere closer to the stairs than the couch.

Raylan can’t find any ham and swiss, so he grabs an italian sub and slides the cooler door closed with a bang. “I’m coming,” he calls up the stairs. 

When he reaches the top, Boyd is right there, looking like he was thinking about braving the descent. Boyd reaches for him, pulling him close, swiftly, and with a wicked grin. He kisses Raylan’s open mouth, wet and messy, but still goddamn hot, and makes a grab for his cock.

Raylan gasps and pulls away, almost dropping the sandwich. “Shit,” he curses, “cut that out, asshole.”

Boyd makes sort of a pouty face at that, but keeps himself close to Raylan, forcing him to walk them back towards the couch. “Why?” Boyd asks softly.

“Because I got you this delicious sub and we’re not doin’ anything until you eat it.” And even then, Raylan knows, they’re going to talk about some shit.

Boyd looks at the sub in Raylan’s hand rather dubiously and asks, “There wasn’t no ham and cheese?”

“Not that I could find. I’m not goin’ back down for another, so you better fuckin’ eat it,” Raylan warns.

Boyd’s mouth twists like he’s trying not to let it pout anymore and he takes the sandwich from Raylan’s proffered hand. He turns, sitting down heavily on the couch and unwrapping the sandwich slowly, like it’s a present and he wants to save the paper. Raylan goes back to the kitchen area and pours him a glass of water.

When he returns, sitting himself down in one of the plush leather chairs arranged opposite Boyd’s monstrosity of a couch, Boyd’s got the sub held up to his mouth. He’s chewing on what looks like a rather large bite, and looking at Raylan with dark, regretful eyes. After he swallows, he frowns deeply and says, “Raylan, I am real sorry about all this.”

Raylan smiles, huffing out not much of a sigh. He takes off his hat and sets it down on the coffee table, ready to stay for a while. He leans forward and says, “It’s okay. But, Boyd?”

Boyd’s brows raise, but his mouth is full again so he says nothing. Raylan just wanted to make sure he had the man’s attention anyway. “We got some shit to sort out. You know that, right?”

Boyd nods and continues to eat, casting his eyes down to the floor. He’s got his legs up on the couch and underneath him, sitting indian-style with his shoes off. His shoulders are slumped as though defeated in some way, though Raylan figures it could just be his being tired from getting so drunk.

Raylan’s about to open his mouth, to ask a question, or offer to answer one, when his phone rings, vibrating loudly in his pocket. He knows it can’t be Art, not when Raylan had told him he was taking time over the weekend, going on a trip to see an old friend, so he pulls it out. He looks down at the screen, sighing heavily this time when he sees that it’s Winona.

Boyd’s still busy with the sub, so he flips open the phone and answers with a neutral, “Hey.”

“Hey yourself,” Winona says and it sounds as though she’s smiling. “I was about to go out to Winchester to see a show a girlfriend of mine told me about. You wanna meet there? I hear the band’s good.”

Raylan stills, frozen in surprise and he feels Boyd’s eyes on him. The room is quiet. He’s certain Boyd can hear her voice, if not everything that she’s saying. He might as well get the whole story in one overheard conversation then. “What about Gary? I thought you were gonna work things out.”

There’s a distinct pause over the line, but she picks up quickly and to her credit, there’s not much strain in her voice. “Well, I don’t know about that anymore. I just wanted to see you, Raylan. Will you come out with me?”

“Listen, if you wanna talk because something happened, that’s always fine, Winona. But if you want to fuck around with me about will you or won’t you, I can tell you now, I’m pretty much done with that shit. Also, I’m not in town, so I can’t meet tonight anyway.”

“Where are you?” she asks, either ignoring or not acknowledging his anger.

Raylan looks at Boyd now, whose eyes seem to be riveted to his mouth. He’s stopped eating, but the sub is nearly gone anyway. “I’m visiting an old friend I just got back into touch with,” he says and is sure she’s going to think that’s a lie.

“Raylan, you don’t have any old friends.”

Raylan almost doesn’t say it, but then he thinks fuck the whole thing and replies, “You remember me talkin’ about Boyd Crowder?”

There’s another protracted silence and he knows she must remember, no way she doesn’t. “Oh,” she says softly. “Oh shit.”

Boyd has set down the last bite of the sub, on the paper that he’s folded neatly, and he’s staring into Raylan’s eyes now. 

“Yeah,” Raylan breathes and hangs up the phone. It’s sort of a dick move, but he’s pretty sure she’ll understand and he and Boyd really do have shit to talk about.

They stare at each other for at least a minute. And finally Raylan can’t stand the silence. “Did you drink any of that water?” he asks Boyd, clearly able to tell it hasn’t been touched.

Boyd swipes it off the coffee table like Raylan’s just thrown down a gauntlet and he drinks half the damn thing in three gulps. “Happy now?” he asks, not slurring nearly as much as before.

Raylan doesn’t dignify that with an answer. “You want to ask me something,” he says quietly. “Probably ten different things. Ask away, Boyd.”

“That was your wife?” Boyd’s elbows are propped on his knees and he’s leaning his chin on his hands like he wouldn’t be able to hold it up otherwise. Raylan tightens his lips and makes sure to remind himself that Boyd is still fairly drunk. Though he ultimately might be able to use that to get them through this conversation relatively unscathed.

“Ex-wife,” he answers. “She left me before Miami. We fell back into bed when I came back to Kentucky.”

“But she’s got another man?” Boyd asks, eyes curious. He seems surprised.

Raylan shrugs. “Who knows at this point. Her husband’s name is Gary, but they’ve been on the rocks since I helped her get him out of this crazy real estate deal with some gangsters a couple months ago.”

Boyd’s face breaks into a grin of amusement. “You saved her, huh?”

Raylan shrugs again, feeling exposed. “I really do try not to be such a cliche. It sort of just happens, all right?”

Boyd frowns now. “But you told her about me.”

It’s not really a question, but Raylan answers it anyway. He tries to shrug it off, smiling a bit in a self-deprecating way and leaning back in his chair as he says, “Well, it’s not like I was some kind of closet case. I was out with a boy the night we met, so I couldn’t really lie to her about it. She did get me drunk the night I told her about you, though.”

There’s something uncertain in Boyd’s eyes as he asks, “What did you tell her?”

Raylan hesitates. “Boyd, I dunno if--”

“She said, ‘shit,’ Raylan, when you said it was me. Why’d she say that?”

“Other than the fact that I actually don’t have any other old friends to speak of?” Raylan asks, crossing his arms.

Boyd smirks. “Sure. Other than that.”

Raylan looks away, getting his thoughts in order, before meeting Boyd’s eyes once more. They still look uncertain, and he finds it strangely surreal, unnerving. 

Raylan settles into his story-telling voice, less wry than usual maybe, since he’s not telling a joke, but he sees Boyd’s lips curve up into a nostalgic smile at the change in his tone. “It was after we were married, not long though. We were trading stories we’d been too embarrassed to tell when we were dating, both drunk, maybe looking to start something we didn’t know how to finish. You know, pushing boundaries. She always knew about the boys, but she never asked me about it directly ‘til that night.”

Boyd’s expression grows more curious as Raylan continues to talk, so he smiles. He remembers what fucking assholes they were, Winona and him, Boyd and him, too. “She asked me, after maybe a whole bottle of wine just for her, ‘So what turned you gay, Raylan?’ and I told her, choosing to ignore her failure to use the proper terminology, ‘The hands and teeth of a boy named Boyd Crowder.”

Boyd blinks like he’s not sure he heard that right, then he moves slowly off the couch, side-stepping the coffee table with more ease than Raylan might have expected, to climb on top of him. “Yeah?” Boyd says, his hands coming up to cup Raylan’s face, his smile bright in the darkness of the room.

Raylan’s not sure if he’s asking if that was really what he said or really what he meant, he just says, “Yeah,” right back, a confirmation of nothing in particular. He lifts his face for Boyd’s kiss, thinking that they probably should do some more talking. Boyd sinks himself lower into Raylan’s lap and Raylan pulls him closer, rough, and Boyd lets out a breathless laugh. He grins into Raylan’s lips, nosing his way across to the place behind Raylan’s ear, the one they discovered together makes him crazy.

“You tell her anything else about me?” he asks softly, drawing a hand down to Raylan’s crotch, squeezing down on his upper thigh.

“Yeah,” Raylan answers. “I told her, took me years to get you. By then it was too late.”

Boyd’s smiles goes sad, and he pulls back, his eyes full of dark regret, but something bright too, like his goddamn smile. “Ain’t too late now, is it?”

“I don’t think so,” Raylan breathes then pulls slightly away. “You think we could do this on your bed this time?”

Boyd laughs, throwing his head back and almost slipping off Raylan’s lap before he steadies him. Boyd pulls himself upright and close to Raylan again, kissing him hard and sure. “We can do it anywhere you want to, baby,” Boyd says to his lips.

Raylan smiles, realizing Boyd’s only half-listening at this point. “I want to do it on the bed, Boyd.”

“All right,” he replies and Raylan has to make sure he doesn’t trip as he puts his feet back on the floor. He smiles a little sheepishly and not quite in Raylan’s direction, but they make it to the bedroom safely.

After Boyd pulls him clumsily on top of him, Raylan gets himself situated, braced above Boyd on the bed as he lay flat on his back, looking up like he somehow still can’t believe Raylan’s there. Raylan smiles softly and kisses him in the same way. “Did all that drinkin’ actually get you to stop freaking out about this?” he asks, humor in his voice.

Boyd frowns, like Raylan’s got it wrong. “I wasn’t freaking out,” he says defensively.

“Sure, you weren’t,” Raylan agrees, smirking, and kisses him again, then pushes off to straddle Boyd. He begins to work on Boyd’s belt and fly. The boy is hard already, hips pushing up into Raylan’s hands as they work. His eyes are closed, but only for a moment, and when he opens them there’s something a bit sharper in them, determined.

“I owe you one back, Raylan,” Boyd says and makes a swift move to flip them over. 

Raylan’s not expecting it, though as soon as he realizes, he’s worried that if he doesn’t go along they’ll both end up on the floor, so he relaxes and lets Boyd have his way. Boyd smiles like he just pulled a fast one on him, even though Raylan’s already got his hands on his own fly, figuring Boyd’s manual dexterity is probably shot at this point.

Boyd pulls Raylan’s jeans down roughly as Raylan makes himself say, “Boyd, you don’t have to. We can just--”

“No, no,” Boyd says and doesn’t look up. He’s climbing down Raylan’s prone body like a ladder, brows furrowed like he’s not sure how to begin. “I owe you one back, baby.”

“You really don’t.” Raylan reaches down to touch Boyd’s chin, fingers brushing up across his cheek and finally he looks right into Raylan’s eyes. 

He smiles as if Raylan’s the one being ridiculous. 

Raylan tells him, “We got time.”

“I want to,” Boyd says softly, hands sliding up Raylan’s exposed thighs, then back down, and Raylan can’t say he doesn’t want it too. “Real bad.” Then his smile quirks again, breaking like a wave across his face and he says in a filthy tone, “I’m still _hungry_ , Raylan.”

Raylan thrusts his hands into Boyd’s already messy hair and rolls his eyes away, even as Boyd swallows him down. “Goddammit,” he says, equal parts exasperation, humor, and want, then he groans because Boyd is trying hard. Boyd is going to town and maybe it’s messy and maybe he’s choking more than he might, but holy shit it’s fucking good. 

Raylan feels it building and his eyes shut themselves up, but he twists his fingers in Boyd’s hair and Boyd moans into him and he says, “Touch yourself, baby. Come with me.” 

Boyd moans again and Raylan can feel the movement of his hand, the rhythm, through the mattress. The fingers of Boyd’s left hand are digging into Raylan’s hipbone, steadying him, then pulling him up, pushing him back, until he’s fucking Boyd’s face. He’s right there and Boyd pulls off, pressing his mouth to the inside of Raylan’s thigh as his come spills out and all over Boyd’s shoulder and back. Boyd finishes a second later, groaning into Raylan’s skin, his load spurting up between them, hot and heavy as their breaths.

“Ah, fuck,” Boyd says and Raylan pulls him up and close. He’s smiling, wide and blissful, by the time Raylan can kiss him again. “Fuck,” he murmurs, like that’s the only word he can remember at the moment.

“That’s right,” Raylan murmurs, twining their fingers together, pressing his lips to Boyd’s collarbone and shoulder, tasting himself on Boyd’s warm skin.

Boyd sort of laughs, maybe at himself, maybe at Raylan, and he presses his face to Raylan’s shoulder. “I got the spins,” he murmurs. “Shit.”

Raylan draws his hand up into Boyd’s hair, in an attempt to soothe. His sympathies aren’t incredibly intense, seeing as Boyd drank himself this way, but he does feel sort of bad in a general sense. “You ain’t gonna be sick, are you?” he asks softly.

Boyd shakes his head and presses closer. Raylan holds onto him, remembering the previous night when Boyd wasn’t drunk at all and still wanted to be this near to him. Raylan smiles. “You gonna ask me any more stupid questions?”

“I think that’s all I got when it comes to you, baby,” Boyd says, maybe too honestly.

Raylan presses his lips to Boyd’s hair and replies, “What would you say if I told you I really don’t care?”

Boyd kind of sighs, a rolls over a bit to stick his face between Raylan and the pillow underneath him, so Raylan can barely hear him mumble, “That you’re probably bein’ as stupid about it as me.”

Raylan laughs silently towards the canopy above them. At least now he’s admitting it.

 

Boyd is awoken by the sound of his phone ringing. It’s a digital tune he never bothered to change to anything more interesting and right now it’s splitting his head open. He knows the phone is in the pocket of his jeans, but it takes him a few excruciating seconds to realize that he didn’t actually get his jeans off until he was jerking off with Raylan’s dick in his mouth.

He scrambles down to the foot of the bed, trying and failing to dodge Raylan’s ridiculous legs in the process and almost getting kneed in the groin as Raylan groans and shifts across the mattress, mumbling, “What the fuck,” through a heavy, tired sigh.

“Sorry, sorry,” Boyd mutters, leaning over to the floor and pulling the phone from his rumpled pocket. He glances at the screen and answers the call in one motion. “Lydia? Is something wrong?” he asks, thinking maybe Daniel was more pissed than usual they hadn’t followed the rules yesterday. They’ve had big fights over it before, long and bitter ones.

“I don’t know yet,” she says in a clipped tone and Boyd knows she’s still mad at him. “Have you confessed your love to the man in your bed? I assume that’s where he is since Mark Angelo told me you left together, rather early, last night.”

“Lydia--” Boyd is about to defend himself, knowing she’s right, knowing Caroline was too, remembering that Raylan really had wanted to talk to him about things but he hadn’t listened, yet again, and just climbed into bed anyway.

Then Raylan is at his side, breathing out another heavy sigh he says, “Give me that,” and plucks the phone from Boyd’s hand. He gives Boyd a sidelong look, speaking over the line in a tone that sounds strangely official. “Listen, ma’am, this is Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens, and I understand why it is you seem to think you have the right to stick your nose in my business. But I want to let you know that at 8:30 in the morning on a Saturday, the _only_ Saturday I will get to take off this month, the _one_ Saturday that I especially took off to see and screw my good friend Boyd Crowder, I really, really do not appreciate it. It’s nice that you’re such great friends with your fuck buddy that you feel like you can tell him how to run his love life, but I am here to tell you right now that you don’t get to run mine. Boyd and I are going to figure it the fuck out, all right?”

Boyd can hear an extended silence over the little speaker in his phone and he watches Raylan thin his lips and roll his eyes impatiently, until the tinny sound of Lydia saying, “All right,” comes through.

Raylan tells her, “Thank you kindly,” and, even as Boyd is reaching to take the phone back, he snaps it shut and tosses it on the floor next to Boyd’s jeans.

Boyd knows his eyes are wide as he says, “Shit. She’s really gonna hate you, you know. She’s gonna think you’re such an asshole.”

Raylan smiles, shrugging. “I am an asshole. I thought you liked that.”

Boyd’s not even sure why he’s suppressing his grin at this point, maybe it’s because this feeling pushing up from his chest and spilling up through his neck and mouth, feels too big to contain with just a smile. He shows Raylan his teeth anyway. “I kind of do,” he says and wraps his fingers around Raylan’s wrists as they fall back on the bed together.

He presses himself close, worming his way between Raylan’s legs and bracing his hands above his head. Raylan looks up at him, smirking. “Your friend Lydia seems like an asshole too, you know.”

Boyd thinks about it for a second then admits, “Yeah, she kind of is.” He leans down and kisses Raylan, their lips grazing soft and sweet. “Maybe that’s why I like her.” Raylan cranes his neck to reach Boyd’s lips again and opens his mouth for him, warm and lovely, and suddenly, everything that seemed so off-kilter and strange and wrong doesn’t anymore. It all feels like before, like always and beautiful.

Boyd smiles and lets Raylan pull himself up a bit, so they can reach each other. They’re both half-hard from the morning and from the smell of sex and each other sharing the bed. Raylan’s starts kissing, mouthing more, down Boyd’s neck and into the crook of his shoulder. “How you wanna do it?” Boyd asks with baited breath.

“Shut up,” Raylan answers, lifting his head and going back to Boyd’s lips, swollen and bruised already. “I just wanna do it, Boyd. Stop thinking so much.”

So Boyd just takes a hold of his cock and starts pumping it and Raylan’s hand comes down to his and they kiss more and breath on each other and groan, rutting up hard. Raylan pulls back a bit, wrapping his free hand around Boyd’s neck to stare at him as he’s coming and it’s so hot and he’s smiling like Boyd is the dirtiest, most amazing thing he’s ever seen. 

Raylan murmurs, eyes blown wide and dark, “That’s better,” and it’s over for Boyd. He comes with a jerk and a stifled gasp and Raylan pumps him, up and down, one last time, like he’s drawing just one last bit, like he’s going to tug all Boyd’s tension free.

Boyd thinks maybe he swears some more, which is all he seems to do when he’s done fucking Raylan. He’s usually more articulate and he can’t decide if that disconcerting or incredible. 

Raylan holds him after, staying in the same position, just calming breaths and tightened fingers. Boyd thinks, Raylan never used to do that. It was always Boyd who was holding on.

He lifts his head and looks into Raylan’s eyes. He asks, “Raylan, why do you want to do this again?”

Raylan sort of blinks at him, then furrows his brows and replies, “Why wouldn’t I?”

Boyd feels like maybe he should pull away, but as soon as he shifts in that direction, Raylan’s hands tighten around his arm and his hip.

“Why not, Boyd?” Raylan asks again with a hard, stubborn edge to his voice.

Boyd usually tries very hard not to dwell on the negative, not to let it bother him, the things people say sometimes, the things he’s had to do to live the way he wants. But he does, in that moment, for Raylan, so he’ll understand what kind of bed he’s going to to be making for himself.

“Because I walk out the door more than I let people in, Raylan. Because I’m this town’s goddamn bicycle and I don’t understand the meaning of the word monogamy. Because I ruin people’s marriages and friendships and sometimes their fucking lives. And... because I left you. I left you without a word before you could leave me.”

“You gonna do that again?” Raylan asks him, eyes grave, but somehow understanding.

Boyd shakes his head, he wants to say no. He wants to say there’s nowhere he could go Raylan wouldn’t know to look for him. He’s been going back ever since he ran away and the only place he’s got left is Harlan. But he says, “I don’t know.” He can never know for sure.

“Bullshit,” Raylan says and kisses him. The kiss is rough, but brief, and when Raylan breaks away he says in a grim tone, “It took me a long time to realize what a coward you are, Boyd. I always thought you were so brave, so smart, and you were. But not about me. Why is that?” The tone of his questions is plaintive, hopelessly confused. 

When Boyd doesn’t answer, Raylan goes on, “You were never afraid to do all those things with me, all those things that if anybody found out, we’d be beaten, strung up, shot. I know you had other boys before me, I could tell from how good you were. I know you had girls in high school, you had anyone you wanted. You weren’t afraid to do that. But you couldn’t tell me how you felt?”

Boyd doesn’t want to deny the feelings he had for Raylan. It’s obvious enough now with the things he’s said since Raylan came here, it was obvious enough then in retrospect. “You were the only thing I ever needed, Raylan, and I--”

“You what?”

“I thought you were only there because I wanted you to be,” Boyd says in a rush. “I thought, if there was a girl, you’d never touch me again. I’d never heard of anyone like me, I thought I’d made you that way for myself and if we were away from Harlan, you’d see--you’d be different. I didn’t want you different, but you didn’t want Harlan so I left before you could, before I had to watch you walk away.”

“Boyd, you didn’t make me any way,” Raylan’s eyes are hard to read, darkening with something like anger, but his voice is light, incredulous. “You just opened my eyes. I might have had them opened differently a long time after and I might not have, but what you found in me was mine the whole time.”

Boyd looks down. “I know that now, goddammit.”

“Then why would you think I’d want to abandon another chance at this?” Raylan asks seriously. “You think I don’t know about you? How you are? I don’t fucking care, Boyd. You’re the one that got away and you should know that I loved you just as much as you love me.”

Boyd’s whole body stills at the words and he sees Raylan realize Boyd hadn’t known that before.

“You did?”

Raylan smiles, maybe a little embarrassed. He’s the one looking away now, but he looks back as he replies, “Yeah.” 

“But,” Boyd feels lost, at sea and riding on a wave of something so wonderful it’s bewildering. “You never said, either.” 

“I didn’t know. Not for a long time.”

All the air escapes from Boyd’s lungs, as if he’s fallen from a great height. His head might be spinning and he grabs on tight to Raylan. Boyd looks into his eyes and asks, because he wants to make sure he has this straight, “So, we loved each other, more than we loved anybody else, ever, and we let each other go because we were too blind and too stupid to realize what the other one wanted?”

Raylan’s expression is helpless and sad, but there’s a quirk to his lips that Boyd just loves. He’d always been able to see the humor. “I guess so,” he says.

Boyd starts to laugh. He laughs a lot and he sees Raylan’s expression go from reflected amusement, to real concern as his laughter becomes extended and breathless. “That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard,” Boyd tells him. Then he sobers and looks at Raylan consideringly. “No wonder you came back here so fast.”

Raylan smiles. “You thought it was just ‘cause you were so great in the sack?”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Boyd says and kisses him soundly, pushing them back down onto the bed. The come they left on their skin from before these astounding revelations is now cold and sticky and Boyd and Raylan groan together in mutual disgust. 

“Come on,” Boyd says with a smile. “Let’s get cleaned up.”

 

Boyd’s shower is small and he was ready to let Raylan just take a turn first, but Raylan’s hand snags his and pulls him, rather forcefully, right behind him and into the narrow stall. 

Raylan pulls him close and kisses him, but it still hasn’t been that long since they finished, so they just sort of hold each other and kiss and smile like morons. They take turns rinsing off, bumping arms and elbows into hips and ribs the whole time. They’re laughing at each other by the time they’re finished.

They’re standing naked in the steaming hot bathroom, clean, but not dry, when Boyd pulls Raylan in, meeting his lips with a quiet kiss, something simmering and warm, and Raylan’s fingers trail down to the small of his back. 

“I keep thinking it’s the same as before. It feels that way sometimes. But it’s not. You ain’t the same boy, Raylan.” Boyd says and looks long into Raylan’s eyes. Then he smirks and adds, “For one thing, you’re a lot smarter about this shit than you were.”

Raylan smiles, then gives a tiny shrug. “I talk a big game. Ask Winona.” Raylan’s fingers slide up Boyd’s back and tangle in the hair at the back of his neck. “You ain’t the same, either Boyd. For all you’re tryin’ so hard to be.”

Boyd shakes his head, not denying it, just baffled that Raylan can tell. “You think you can muster up all those same feelings again for someone so different?” 

Raylan grins now and kisses him softly. “I think it might be easier, but let’s just wait and see, huh?”

Boyd thinks he can do that. 

He reminds himself, he’s always been very patient when it comes to Raylan.


End file.
